


His jacket was a deep sky blue

by MarquisdeDiscotheque



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Sex, Cornelius Hickey cannot sew, First Time, Hand Jobs, M/M, Pre-Canon, meet-cute but it's in the hold and everyone's favourite rat is seasick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:09:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27603290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarquisdeDiscotheque/pseuds/MarquisdeDiscotheque
Summary: ‘It was William Gibson, the lanky steward with the soft voice. They’d talked on deck sometimes, shared a couple of cigarettes, a laugh when Lieutenant Hodgson’s hat had blown off into the ocean, a few tips on seafaring and a review of Mr Diggle’s latest inedible creations. In the last few weeks that easygoing association had changed, thickened like sugar left bubbling in water. They’d begun to share looks when nobody was looking; he’d seen how Gibson raked over him with his eyes. And he couldn’t say he wasn’t interested in turn.’In which newly rated petty officer Cornelius Hickey cannot sew, gets seasick, and insults command; the perfect catch for any lonely steward.
Relationships: William Gibson/Cornelius Hickey
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29
Collections: Hickeyshipping 2020





	His jacket was a deep sky blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smaragdbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/gifts).



Life on a ship was hard, and strange, but Hickey was nothing if not a good study. In everything, that was, except needlework. A stupid, difficult, confounded practice, one he’d never been taught. Used to be if he got holes in something he wouldn’t care, or he’d steal a better one. But there was less to steal here. And years for a potential victim of theft to notice his nice scarf round Hickey’s narrow neck.  
  
He wished they’d just let him scale the topmast or some other lofty penance, like he’d heard they did with ship’s boys. Things that’d throw fear into the hearts of other men didn’t touch him – but repetition and boredom were the touchstones of naval discipline, and he found those universally disagreeable. So instead of anything worthwhile he’d been holystoning the deck all morning, and now with these red raw hands had to work out how to fucking sew, to boot. Indignity upon indignity.  
  
It was the third set of duties he’d been owing that week – proportionate to the third button that’d come off his old shirt (this time torn as he’d been reaching to caulk a particularly stubborn beam overhead, taking a piece of the shirt with it and ripping a penny-shaped hole by his heart). It was now rattling about next to its neighbours in his pocket.  
  
He’d thought about trying to fix them earlier, yet he hadn’t string nor thread and there were better things to do: reading, sleeping, shirking his general duties, daydreaming about which of the other hands he’d like to fuck (and which of the officers he wouldn’t). But Lieutenant Irving had caught him just before Sunday Service, loitering by the stove in only shirtsleeves, and had been most unimpressed. Stared an awful lot at Hickey’s chest, too, the pious bastard. Why exactly he was staring in the first place, he’d not expounded. Hickey had a few ideas. Spared him a pitying glance; and had a good laugh with the lads after at Irving’s expense. A man should embrace his proclivities before they dragged him under.  
  
So to his buttons, or rather, the lack thereof and the accursed mess he was making of remedying that. He’d have asked a girl normally, but there weren’t girls here (a blessing and a curse, he thought grimly), and even if the chain of command still flummoxed him he knew he was somewhere near the bottom of it.  
  
Needle and thread were borrowed quietly off Mr Armitage, who’d taken pity, and here Hickey now sat, curled up in the furthest, most hidden corner of the hold. Usually the spot was a haven. It’d not taken him long aboard to find a nook where he could bring a lantern and be left well alone. It was far from prying eyes and close enough to the engine to be warm – if you didn’t mind the vermin, which he didn’t, having reasoned they could hardly be more pestilent than his fellow sailors.  
  
But today it’d taken on a hellish aspect – he felt too hot, and weary, and only alone might he finally perceive frustrations that’d been bubbling away for weeks. He unknotted his necktie and rolled up his sleeves. The devil might find mischief for idle hands, as Irving had delighted in telling him, but a little mischief would certainly be better than this.  
  
He’d barely begun when the ship tilted and he slipped entirely; the needle pierced the soft flesh between his thumb and forefinger, poking right out the other side. Buggering hell. He pulled it out with a hiss and took to sucking the wound. Bile rose in his throat – not at the blood, that was nothing, but at the roll of the ship. It was fine above deck, in the open salt breeze and with the sun warming his face, but down here his stomach and his mind couldn’t seem to agree. Didn’t help that it smelled something rotten.  
  
A rustle came from the ladder or thereabouts, but it only seemed to be the rats. One crawled out from under a crate to fix him with dark beady eyes. When it started to crawl onto his shoe he snapped and said, “What do you want, you bastard?”  
  
“Oh!”  
  
Well, that wasn’t a rat. Hickey sat up, wary. “Who’s there?”  
  
A figure peeled away from the shadows near the ladder and ambled over, looking rather guilty.  
  
It was William Gibson, the lanky steward with the soft voice. They’d talked on deck sometimes, shared a couple of cigarettes, a laugh when Lieutenant Hodgson’s hat had blown off into the ocean, a few tips on seafaring and a review of Mr Diggle’s latest inedible creations. In the last few weeks that easygoing association had changed, thickened like sugar left bubbling in water. They’d begun to share looks when nobody was looking; he’d seen how Gibson raked over him with his eyes. And he couldn’t say he wasn’t interested in turn.  
  
He stood now in shirtsleeves, jacket hastily thrown on over but no waistcoat, crouching slightly even though he didn’t have to - must be a habit, tucking his long limbs into spaces that weren’t made for him.  
  
Hickey made his face amenable, all frustrations forgotten. But he didn’t get up.  
  
“Mr Gibson. I hadn’t thought to see you down here, or I’d have made myself more amiable.” He must be here for Hickey – why put faith in coincidence when you could be assured of the workings of men? “Would you like a hand with something?”  
  
Hickey knew full well what he was saying, couched in loosely innocent terms lest he’d somehow misread Gibson (doubtful), but Gibson was slow to bite. A man who liked a bit of wooing, maybe. Or just a decent conversation before a good fuck. Hickey could only hope.  
  
“No, no. In truth, I followed you down here. I had an inkling you might need some help.”  
  
Help, was that what he called it.  
  
“Well, you’re not wrong. Even your being here enlivens my work. See?” He held up his very wonky stitching with a snort. “Come and join, might as well have a smoke and a sit down now you’re here.” He patted the spot next to him, all in good cheer.  
  
The side of Gibson’s mouth quirked upwards; a smile? Perhaps he was not used to smiling very much. Didn’t seem like stewards had much cause to make merry – from what Hickey could work out (a mixture of gossip and pressing his ear to the doors when nobody was looking) they tended to be the only sober men at boisterous – or otherwise awkward – dinners.  
  
Gibson ambled over, sat himself down across from Hickey in the nook he’d found, crates piled high about them. With his long legs out in front of him his ankles rested perilously near Hickey’s, and Hickey had to give himself a stern talking-to in order to avoid becoming distracted. Christ, it wasn’t like he’d never seen an ankle before.  
  
Nonchalant, that was how to play it. Gibson radiated a kind of nervous energy, and he could do with someone assured. Hickey lit a cigarette and took a drag, offered it up – lucky scrap of paper, to bear witness to their union of mouths before they did.  
  
“I’m all right, thanks.”  
  
Oh.  
  
Gibson sat back and cast his gaze upward, looking at the tendrils of smoke as they curled off into the air. Hickey coughed. Not so suave, but truth be told it wasn’t doing his nausea any good, and now that it was no common pursuit he rather regretted starting. He stubbed his cigarette out on a crate and stowed it away in a pocket for later. “Haven’t seen you with a pipe. Fancy your teeth too well, maybe?”  
  
“I don’t have one – I can’t in my cabin, the smoke clings awfully to freshly-washed linens.” He looked rueful, just for a split second, quickly replaced with that mellow, even expression he usually wore, as much steward’s uniform as his gloves. “The officers will smoke in their own, of course, and everywhere else, but god forbid the clothes should come to them like that already.”   
  
“Ah.” Hickey stretched out, let his feet roam. “I fear I’d make a poor steward indeed.”  
  
“What makes you think so? The smoke, the sewing, your propensity for dissent and scowling when you think nobody’s looking?” He’d been watching well, then. One of Gibson’s hands moved to toy idly with a cuff, but he seemed to stop himself at the last minute. Looked to Hickey, asking if he’d judged him rightly.  
  
Hickey beamed, all winning confidence.  
  
“You’ve got me there, Mr Gibson. Yet none of those disqualify a man from devotion, to one cause or another.” He met Gibson’s eyes, plain. “And no, I’d spit in their drinks for a start.” There, truth disguised with enough of a smile it could be a jest. He thought he might’ve overstepped but Gibson let out a raucous laugh, the kind that said he’d surely considered it.  
  
“I take my duties very seriously, Mr Hickey,” he said, but his lingering smile wasn’t quite in agreement. Irreverence, just a touch of it, that was the way forward; a boldness Gibson perhaps wished he possessed in ample quantities. Or perhaps he did and merely harboured it more quietly. But Hickey supposed you couldn’t be too bold, not here, not if you were to keep your job the hard way, by being sincerely good at it. That was the Navy for you. Even brothel girls got time to chinwag about the patrons, he didn’t know why the Navy should be any different.  
  
Gibson caught Hickey’s raised eyebrow and protested in mock-outrage. “What! I do.”  
  
“I’m sure you do.” Hickey smirked, and it wasn’t half genuine neither. “You’re a dark horse, though. Not quite what I thought of a steward, if I’m to be honest.”  
  
“I might say the same of you.” He gave enough of a pause for Hickey to become truly curious – for what man doesn’t want to hear of himself? “I could count the ways,” Billy went on, “although I’d not come close to an answer soon, I believe. Most caulkers know how to caulk, for a start. You surely learned your trade elsewhere.” That sweet sharpness. Hickey’d not expected it, and it pleased him, for it was more of fond teasing than of the insults hurled at him on deck. Friendly, and more. Tenderness there not just for a new comrade, ways of looking that only men who looked knew.  
  
Want. Mr Gibson wanted, and Hickey recognised that easily enough.  
  
“Ah, but are most caulkers such fine company?”  
  
The ship gave a sudden lurid creak around them, cutting Gibson off before he’d the chance to answer; his mouth still comically ajar, as if the noise had emanated from there instead. His smile slowly faded. “We must’ve hit ice.”  
  
Hickey cursed the ice, then grasped the opportunity it presented him with. If they hit a berg he’d bloody well jump into Gibson’s arms, if that was what it took. He furrowed his forehead, schooled his face into something like nervous, though he could not keep the excitement from his voice. “Is that usual? Seems to me a risk they’re taking, barrelling us into ice like that. I’m not minded to see the bottom of the ocean quite yet.”  
  
“It shouldn’t be. Our hull is ten inches thick, solid – they reinforced it especially for the ice, so I’ve heard – and it’s been here before. She sailed south, too, with Captain Crozier, and our Mr Jopson there. She’s a fine thing. I should think us quite safe.” Gibson swallowed. He appeared suddenly too warm, shrugged off his jacket and laid it over a crate next to him, careful not to crease it. Hickey was treated to a view of exposed skin about his neck and cuffs, soft in the lamplight. He edged closer, until their calves met.  
  
Gibson finally seemed to _see_ him. “But you’re not scared at all, are you?”  
  
Hickey tilted his head, all consideration. “I’m not scared of very much.”  
  
“That must be nice. Although there’s more to be scared of here than London, or – Manchester? Liverpool?” His clipped southern vowels made those places seem neat, refined, as if they were merely so much shading on a map. As if there weren’t more horror and debasement to be found in one English city than in all the vast expanse of the Arctic. What a fool.  
  
Hickey didn’t answer, except with a derisive hum that might be taken to mean anything.  
  
The ship gave another sharp groan, and whilst Hickey tried not to flinch, he invariably felt sick at the lilting.  
  
“If you’ve not gotten your sea legs yet, there are things which help,” said Gibson, obviously reading Hickey’s face with more accuracy than his voice. Gibson still looked the sicker of the two of them – so thin as to verge on consumptive – but constitutionally hardy enough, Hickey supposed, to have lasted this long. “Ginger, for one, that’ll settle the stomach.”  
  
“I don’t-” he started, automatically, before stopping himself. When he shut his mouth the nausea lodged at the back of his throat. “Might take some of that, yeah.” Where would he be getting ginger? Not as if he’d exactly brought armfuls of the stuff, a nice arctic picnic packed up neat by a sweetheart or a mother. He wondered briefly what it swapped for, out here. At least bartering would allow him to trade in favours; the only thing he was yet rich in.  
  
Gibson rummaged in one of his pockets – all neatly buttoned, shipshape – and brought out a small tin, once-gaudy greens and pinks advertising something that’d been rubbed and battered into near-illegibility. Hickey eyed it, brow furrowed.  
  
“D’you want some, then? You might stare all day but it won’t make you well. The reading might actually make you sicker. That is- I mean, if you can-”  
  
“You’ve seen me read, I’m no illiterate,” Hickey snapped. Came out harsher than expected but it was a sticking point, he’d grafted hard and he wouldn’t be talked down by a jumped-up laundress. Or anyone else, for that matter. The air seemed icy between them for a minute as he steadied his breathing.   
  
“Sorry. Well, I really was only trying to help.” Billy offered the tin, an olive branch between them.  
  
“Right. Yeah, ta.” He sat forward, still feeling a bit hard-done-by, and reached over. Their fingers met over it, grazing against each other. It was uncanny. The touch set his pulse strong in his ears, and his scorn melted like so much snow. He’d been wanting it so badly. He’d not let himself indulge much, before, and with the merest trace of fingers he’d come undone.  
  
But he reminded himself that Gibson was at most a bit of fun, if he was up for a lark as Hickey suspected; he’d not indulge whatever sentimentality cloyed at him just because he hadn’t had a man in a few months. It wouldn’t do to be in someone’s debt, or under their sway.  
  
“What can I offer you in return?”  
  
Gibson seemed surprised, eyed him up and down – the hunger was there, stark as day, but it was mediated with manners and whims and rules he’d yet to learn. Gibson settled back against his crate. The lamplight cast shadows about his face and collar, limned his hair gold.  
  
“You needn’t give me anything, it was freely given,” he said, softly.  
  
Hickey nodded. He took up a small sticky piece, which took some prying, clinging to the rest with an adamance he admired. It was crystalline, sugared and gluey in a way that stuck to his teeth. An odd taste. Saccharine and then sharp, medicinal and leisurely all at once. Different to ginger cake or pudding. Chewing on it almost made him retch, and after brought a settling warmth to his belly.  
  
“Have another, it’s better you suck on it.” Well. Gibson looked appropriately sheepish after saying that. Not quite the coy virgin, then, though he was still infuriatingly cautious. Hickey took another and sucked as instructed, moving the thing around in his mouth until it started to dissolve. He wasn’t an initiate to many things a man could do with his mouth, but the taste was novel enough to relish and sucking at it somewhat distracted him from any of the lewd comments he’d been preparing.  
  
When he passed the tin back he allowed his hand to linger, brushing along Gibson’s. His hands were warm and rougher than Hickey’d thought. Again the fire at the pit of his stomach, and he couldn’t pretend it was the ginger this time.  
  
He leered over. “Payment in kind then?”  
  
But it didn’t have the intended effect – Gibson snatched up the tin quickly and moved away. He looked hurt, seemed to think Hickey was mocking. Strange. Must have some hang ups of his own, been played for a fool before, maybe – you couldn’t solicit too often without encountering the worst. Hickey had no such qualms, would take it from whoever offered and not think it any great concern, but had met enough men of the skittish variety to know its shape. And Gibson was almost blushing. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but you don’t have to–”  
  
Hickey tutted. “Have to? Who said anything about having to? I do things because I want to, Mr Gibson, and life’d be a bit easier if you were to follow suit.” Hickey allowed himself to stare, let want drip between them like honey. It was nearly embarrassing how much he wanted, how his prick was already straining in his trousers.  
  
“Billy.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Call me Billy.”  
  
And that was that.  
  
He moved forward, lithe, and came crouching in front of Gibson – Billy. Billy smiled. Quiet little thing, honest and really quite radiant.  
  
“All right.” Hickey reached out and Billy didn’t shy away, no turning back now. He cupped the side of his face with a hand, traced the curve of his cheek with a thumb. Billy was an odd looking bloke, sharp except for those soft eyes. Like Christ pried off the cross. He didn’t look like he belonged here any more than Hickey, even as he looked as if he’d never been more at home than when he carried up tea on deck. Always at the edges, looking in and only moderately belonging, a shared experience in many ways – although Gibson seemed content to serve at the table that Hickey was inclined to sit at.  
  
“Yours?” (He must already know.)  
  
“Cornelius.” Why couldn’t he have become a John, an Edward, even another William? Then again, nobody would forget Cornelius in a hurry, and after a life spent cultivating forgettability he was rather looking forward to making his mark.  
  
Billy had to crane his face up at Hickey’s crouching form, and Hickey revelled at the power bestowed upon him. Might as well have been a god, for all Billy looked at him.  
  
Then he pulled Hickey into his lap and they were rutting against each other, desperate as if the ship really had been sinking, breathing hard with their faces not an inch apart. Hickey shuffled and repositioned himself so that his knees were either side of Billy’s thighs, so that he could feel Billy’s hardening length pressing in against his own through their trousers. Oh – oh, that was good. Felt improbably romantic, too. He’d usually go against a wall or in an alley or a park or a bawdyhouse bed, a stranger’s prick in his hand or mouth or inside him or the other way round, and often money to follow. None of that here. Only two men that wanted one another.  
  
They rubbed against each other, and he could feel Billy’s breath hot against his neck and his ear, panting against him. Remembered someone telling him once by the docks that if you held a shell to your ear you could hear the sea in it and thinking why would you do that if you can hear the bloody sea anyway and wondering why that’d suddenly come to mind now having been some years ago– and then Billy pushed a hand up against his crotch and he stopped thinking much altogether.  
  
Billy kissed him, then. And he didn’t do that often and he didn’t usually like it, but it’d be looking a gift horse in the mouth to protest: warm lips pressed up against his and a hand working away at the buttons of his trousers. Billy was a nice enough kisser, insistent but not clumsy with it. Hickey opened his mouth a little and let him lick into it.  
  
Billy undid his buttons with practiced ease and got a hand on him. The boards beneath them creaked as Hickey leaned in closer, as Billy began pulling at his prick with an earnest sort of concentration that wasn’t unwelcome. He _was_ practiced, anyway. He must bring it to all his work but here he seemed most contented; he hummed in satisfaction when he ran a thumb over the slit, beads of pre-come already welling there, made Hickey shiver with it. It was very agreeable not to have to teach a man, to find yourself in capable hands to let him get on with it. Hickey pulled off the kiss and rested into Billy’s shoulder, closed his eyes and let pleasure take him.  
  
Soon his thighs began to tremble – he could feel himself close, the burr of his pleasure welling up within him.  
  
“Wait- wait-” Hickey put his hand over Gibson’s to still him. He rested his forehead against the side of the crate behind them to catch his breath and bring himself back from the edge of his release. His hair had started to cling to his neck with sweat.   
  
Gibson rested a tentative hand against Hickey’s thigh. “No?” He sounded worried, until he saw Hickey’s grin. “Or more?”  
  
“You want to? A proper tumble?” Hickey raised his eyes to the darkened corners of the hold, the crates and barrels, nooks and crannies enough for a small harem, as long as they stayed fairly quiet.  
  
He thought Gibson might say it were too risky, but the man had obviously been pining something rotten, because his eyes fairly lit up and he nodded. “We could- ah-” Gibson made to get up, the roll of his hips sending a jolt of pleasure through Hickey’s crotch.  
  
“Excellent idea, Mr Gibson.” Businesslike, half a mockery of their enforced formality the rest of the while. But Gibson frowned and said again, “Please – please do call me Billy. You’ve had your cock in my hand, I think we might use Christian names freely.”   
  
“’Course. Though god help you for mine, I know it’s a mouthful.” He looked around at the wooden wall like he was inspecting it for gaps, though really he was wondering where might prove a good fucking-place. If only caulking were always that fun. “How’d you like it?”  
  
He thought, in the dim, he saw Billy blush. Thought so. “I… I prefer-” He looked, chin up, torn between embarrassment and desire.  
  
“You want my prick inside you?” Hickey helpfully supplied. Nothing wrong about taking a prick up the arse, in his book, not if you wanted it – it took nerve and it felt good, and those were two of Hickey’s guiding principles. Perhaps he’d publish a book on the subject, become the talk of high society dinner parties and present at Somerset House with his new sexual philosophy. He made himself laugh with the thought.  
  
He brought Billy to stand and leaned him back against the wall, caressed the front of his trousers and stood on his tiptoes so that he could whisper in his ear. “Is that it, then? Shall I take you over a crate right here, make you cry out for it, come inside you?” He bit at Billy’s earlobe and kissed his jaw. “I’d have you thinking on me for days after, Billy, whenever you sit, whenever you serve their tea, thinking about how I buggered you senseless down here.”  
  
Billy groaned, nodded a _please, yes_ , and Hickey knew he’d called it right. Billy grasped one of Hickey’s hands and brought it to his own backside and Hickey didn’t need more invitation. He licked the fingers of his other hand; drew two of them obscenely into his mouth, holding Billy’s gaze the whole while. Then he got his hands down Billy’s trousers, pushing the billows of his shirttails out the way and grasping his prick with one hand and his arse with the other. Lucky it was slightly better cushioned than the rest of him. Billy gasped and made a very quiet whine that went straight to Hickey’s cock. The glory of it; the glory of the act, yes, but to elicit these noises from another man before he’d even buggered him, and on equal footing, now that was some wonder.   
  
They moved together, tussling and teasing. Billy kissed and licked like a starving man against Hickey’s neck, pushing aside his loosened necktie to mouth wet marks down to his collar. A right awkward angle it must’ve been for him. But all Hickey could think was how good it felt.  
  
The muscle of Billy’s backside was rangy but the skin pleasingly soft, and Hickey ran his warm, wet fingers there, played at his entrance, pushed one inside. He was an old hand, both ways, and by the feel of it so was Billy.  
  
Heavy panting filled the hold.  
  
“Please–” Gibson pushed onto him. “I’m not made of tea china, you don’t have to be so gentle.” This seemed like a lie, but who was Hickey to complain. A good little sea-wife he’d got himself.  
  
He pulled out – “That’s quite the opposite of what I meant– _oh_.” For Hickey had blown out a lamp, dipped his fingers in the warm oil, and brought them back to Billy’s arse. “Christ, Christ. Please–” Hickey was unrelenting and curved his fingers in a way he knew felt good and Billy was canting into him, prick leaking against Hickey’s, both of them with trousers pulled haphazardly about and shirts loose and rutting hard enough for the timber to creak against Billy’s back. “I’m ready, I’m ready. Christ, please, hold me-”  
  
How could he resist that? Hickey had barely gotten his hands untangled from Billy’s drawers and Billy was already turning around and pulling his trousers and drawers down about his thighs, bracing his forearms on a crate. Hickey took more of the oil for himself and pushed in.  
  
“Oh,” Hickey said quietly, “oh.” That was all he allowed himself.  
  
He got his hands on Billy’s hips and held him firm, getting himself seated. He began to fuck into Billy, slow strokes as they got accustomed to each other. A sheen of sweat was forming in the crevices of his body still hidden by clothes, salty and dripping at the back of his collar, his hair falling loose about his face. It was so tight, hot – after months without, his nerves thrummed with the overwhelming feel of it all, each sensation catching him off-guard.  
  
The very air about them felt heavy. Billy moved against him, to meet him; urged him deeper, that was a neat trick, and Hickey took the suggestion with cheer and fucked him hard. Every time he pushed back in there was a muffled groan, and when he caught a look over Billy’s shoulder he saw Billy held his mouth against an arm to stifle the shouts. Good. Let him cry out for it, nobody’d hear over the engine and the bells and the calls of the men.  
  
He was treated to a fine view of Billy’s neck and his back where his shirt rode up, the lower back and the curve of his pale buttocks. He was gently freckled there. Hickey felt almost tender at it; these marks of humanity, of a real man who strode in the sun and bathed in the briny sea and whose skin bore the last traces of adventures in foreign climes. He’d ask Billy about it, his travels. When he wasn’t buried balls-deep inside him.  
  
The feeling that’d been so tightly in his belly coiled began to loosen, and he let himself go at it harsher, chase it until he was on the very brink of his release.  
  
“Like that, yes-” Billy keened, and he remembered latently that he’d barely touched the man. He felt round to put a hand on Billy’s cock and bring him off first (a gesture of fine magnanimity, he reckoned), but Billy was already there tugging at himself. He settled for grasping at Billy’s slight wrist, laying his hand over to feel the movement; they felt joined proper now, he could feel every stroke going through them both.  
  
“I’m going to- oh, keep going-” Billy tightened around him and he felt a hot liquid spill onto their entwined hands, and then he gave over entirely to fucking Billy hard into the crate until his own crisis uncurled and washed over him.  
  
Time seemed to twist about itself and he’d be hard-pressed to know how long they stayed like that, curled together both, drawing out their ecstasies. It ran hot through him, left him panting.   
  
Hickey’s sensibilities at last caught up with him and he grinned at the afterglow, laughing into the back of Billy’s neck. He gave the freckles there a kiss.  
  
“Liked that?” he asked sweetly.  
  
“Mmmm.”  
  
“Like to do it again?”  
  
“What, _now_?”  
  
“No. Bugger, I wish. If we’d time…” he ran a hand over Billy’s flank. Billy sighed and leaned into him, chasing the last warmth before they’d have to part. But part they did; Hickey pulled himself out with a small grunt and buttoned his trousers, though he afterwards had the queerest notion of touching Billy’s back through his shirt, tracing the curve of his spine, which he briefly indulged. “Again, though. I might need a hand with something else down here. Still getting my sea legs, like you said.” He looked about himself and chuckled. “Something nice about it, too, fucking in the big belly of this ship.”  
  
“Don’t be crude,” Billy said, taking a handkerchief to the evidence of their union dripping down his thigh.  
  
“Says you.” Hickey eyed the handkerchief impassively and then licked the last of Billy’s spend off his own hand with very little compunction. He imagined licking it off Billy’s thighs, licking into his arsehole, Billy sucking his cock as they lay together in a nice warm bed. Well, there was time for all that. “I mean it, though, there’s a justice to it. I’ve never gotten a woman big and left her to it, I’d bet half the gentlemen waltzing about over our heads couldn’t say the same.” He wondered, for a moment, if Billy was one of them. Seemed unlikely but then you never could be sure.  
  
Billy was pulling his trousers up and tucking his shirt back in, neatening himself till the only sign of their congress was the pink flush in his cheeks. He smiled at Hickey when he caught him looking, conspiratorial and pleased.  
  
“You ever, with a woman?”  
  
Billy raised his eyebrows. “You have a fine aptitude for timing, haven’t you Cornelius?” When the deflection didn’t seem to work, he huffed and said, “Yes, when I was younger. I didn’t take to it, evidently. I’ve been among men long enough to know what I like, although it’s not – it’s not the reason I’m here. It’s a job first and foremost, it always has been, and I like it that way.”   
  
“Sailor’s life for you.”  
  
“And you.”  
  
Hickey tucked his own shirt into his trousers with little fuss, smoothed back his hair and surveyed their own little corner of the ship. “I suppose, though I’ve ambitions for more.” The taste of the ginger lingered in his mouth, mixing with the salt of skin and come, and he searched it out, ran his tongue over the back of his teeth. “Sandwich Islands, that’s what I’m here for, and the promise of something new.” Gibson looked up then, as if Hickey were speaking to him especially, but Hickey went on, “Couldn’t wait to be rid of bloody England and get aboard, you know, start again in some new place. I’ve read… all I’ve read of foreign places, it sounded wondrous.” Now he’d got an attentive audience he found he couldn’t shut up about it. He’d never been this mouthy afterwards before, usually had a cigarette to suck on and a snide comment to make and then he was gone. But he couldn’t be gone here, they’d never be more than a hundred feet apart.  
  
“I fear the papers may have misrepresented life aboard a ship,” Gibson remarked, not without a dry wit. “It must’ve been disconcerting.”  
  
Hickey shrugged. “I’ve had a better view than I was expecting, so far.”  
  
“Mmm. And you’ll see it again, no doubt.” Gibson pulled on his jacket and made to leave.  
  
Hickey looked to his sewing all rumpled on the floor where he’d left it, and turned wide eyes to Gibson, calling after him.  
  
“Oi, wait, help a man out, Billy? I’ll suck your cock, next time.”  
  
“You’re incorrigible!” Gibson snorted. “Oh, I actually came here for that anyhow.”  
  
“The cock or the sewing?”  
  
“The s-” he started laughing quietly. “Both. Both.” And he took it up in his hands and said, “This wouldn’t take ten minutes, if you knew what you were doing. Good as new by three bells.”  
  
Hickey grinned and sidled up to him, put his hands on Billy’s waist where he’d neatly tucked his shirt back in. “Aren’t you a charmer?” Billy leaned down to kiss him and he let him; languid, warm, encompassing. When they pulled apart it was with the beginnings of remorse, a disconcertingly unfamiliar sensation.  
  
A light smear of blood from Hickey’s hand, all but forgotten in the tussle and now starting to smart once more, had found its way onto Billy’s shirt. It blotted down through the creamy fabric where he’d been touched and held. Hickey didn’t say anything. He’d be sure to find it later, meticulous man he was. A little memento to remind him of their encounter, maybe he’d flush red in the comfort of his cabin and take himself in hand, thinking on the press of their bodies against each other. No such privacy for Hickey; he’d have to come down here or make do in his hammock or in the privy in the dead of night. Or wait until Billy sought him out again, now he had Billy reliably eating out of his hand. An agreeable arrangement. Someone to fuck – but perchance someone to talk to, as well. It wasn’t necessary but it would be nice.  
  
He’d never been one for loneliness, but then he’d never been so far from a city before, and his own company had always been an escape rather than an inevitability. This felt – not a regression, but a little taste of normality, an anchor to his new venture.  
  
Billy had taken up the sewing and began to ascend the ladder first, but paused. He had a look Hickey couldn’t place, something like a frown but not quite. “You aren’t like the other men here. Not like any man I’ve met on a ship before.”  
  
Too fucking right, Hickey thought. You don’t know the half of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a good old sea song about sweethearts, 'My Johnny was a shoemaker':  
> His jacket was a deep sky blue and curly was his hair,  
> His jacket was a deep sky blue, it was, I do declare,  
> For to reeve the topsails up against the mast  
> And to sail across the sea - stormy sea -  
> And sail across the stormy sea.


End file.
